Hey guys just picked up a UT210E clamp meter and I’m trying to read my amp draw from my tail cap what settings do I put the meter on ? I tried 2,20,100 and no go ?
Depending on the light—to be safe I’d pick 20—make sure to set the meter on DC—then loop a wire through the clamp of the meter—then jump across tail of light connecting back edge of battery tube with neg side of battery—make sure the two ends of the wire are not touching each other or making contact with the opposite contact of what you are jumping—hope this makes sense—you will have to disconnect and reconnect to go through the modes
It needs to be on DC current, and it needs one wire going through the loop.
Thank u I did not know about the loop through the meter
Once you put it in the DC mode you need to zero out the meter before you take a measurement.
If it has leads it can be done that was as well. All the clamp meters I've seen have leads. It would be much easier to do for someone with no DMM experience.
Yes this meter has leads, any size wire for when I look it around the clamp ?
Most of the clamp meters do not use the leads for taking current measurements. This saves them from dealing with isolation and fusing inside the meter. The leads are strictly for voltage and resistance measurements.
[Edit]
I just opened up my UT-210E and confirmed, if you look at the labels near the leads, the is no “A” for Amps. Voltage, capacitance, diode, continuity, and resistance yes, but no current.
[/Edit]
OK I’ll search for a new meter
Why would you want a new meter— This meter works great—I have both types—The UT210E is as accurate as my meter with 8” 12ga wire leads
I will try and post a pic, but holding both ends of a wire plus the meter might make it impossible
I found a vid on YouTube (4 ways to measure tail-current) I see how he used a copper strip to measure
I’ll keep it for other applications
Far be it from me to tell someone NOT to buy a new tool! But, this meter is a good meter, depending on what you want to do. If you are looking to get accurate current draw on various lights, this is a good choice. You simply need a short loop of heavy gauge wire and perhaps a jig to hold everything in place. This is actually often more accurate than using even a very expensive meter with leads given high current draws. The leads have a wire resistance, as well as contact resistance at each end, for each lead. Then the sense resistor in the meter itself. The loop method eliminates all but two contact resistances (assuming that you use a heavy gauge wire loop).
There are plenty of pictures around of how to do this, but really all you need to do is use the wire, lets say maybe 6 inches long, to jump from the negative of the battery to the body of the flashlight. This wire goes through the loop of the meter. Having enough hands is the big problem; you need one for each end of the wire, one to hold the meter, and one to zero the meter before you make the connection. Zeroing the meter just before you make the connection makes sure that the meter is not adding or subtracting any random EMF from the environment.
There are a huge number of meters, clamp, DMM. Many do both, most do many different measurements if different ways.
I have 4 meters, 2 stay at work and 2 here at home. Before I purchased any of them I researched and in many cases tested them before purchasing.
I have a clamp at work that will measure current either way, clamp or leads. At a much higher range using the clamp. I made sure it could measure whatever I needed before purchasing. The DMM at work, same thing, I actually prefer it to a clamp.
At home it's a bit different, my DMM does most of what I need here so the clamp seldom is used. Also the clamp I have at home is AC only. Anything DC. I do here my DMM can easily handle. I keep the AC only clamp here cause when you need it, ot always seems that you need it badly lol.
The point of a clam meter is to not have to use leads, because when measuring with leads it becomes very inaccurate due to the resistance in the meter.
Just use a small wire to complete the circuit of your flashlight, and then use the clamp around that wire to find out the current.
Awesome thanks guys
+ don’t move the meter after you zero’ed it because it changes the measurement.
True.
the clamp meter you have is really good down to 50-100mA
on lower currents a DMM with leads is a lot more accurate,
but also measuring the voltage over a calibrated 0.1-1 Ohm resistor (calibrated I mean you use a tunable resistor parallel to it to set it exactly 0.1-1Ohm) works great
the lower the current you want to measure like a few uA the bigger your resistor needs to be
then you just plug your calibrated shunt with leads soldered on it to the device you want to measure the current indirectly
then you can easily converse the voltage reding over your shunt to a precize current
I’ve read that anything below 200mA shouldn’t be trusted with this clamp meter. I used it to measure current on low setting of my Convoy S2+. It showed about 70mA, while a DMM with test leads showed 45mA. Not sure which one to trust here…
But if you’re mainly interested in your flashlight’s max current draw at full power, then this UniT clamp meter should work well.
on my clamp meter on low currents I do 5 or 10 windings through the clamp so I get the multiple readout than the current is
to see which one is right you can calibrate a 1 Ohm resistor at 1A
I calibrated this one to be 1Ohm from the ends of the wires
basically the resistor is about 1 Ohm, the leads add some dozen mOhm, depending on the lengh
the parallel tunable resistor calibrates it using my digital 200€ despktop PSU
now using this I get for every 1mA running through it 1mV reading
so I can measure with it from 5-100mA with good precision without adding much resistance
this is cheaper than an extra DMM that would be only for low current measurements
